How to Have a Fatter Belly 2

TAKE ADVANTAGE OF FREE FOOD
This is mostly advice of those ambitious gainers who, like me, are still in college.  While it might seem like a one way ticket to embarrassment at first, taking full advantage of the literally endless supply of food available in a dorm cafeteria is a situation that nobody should let go to waste……

STRETCH
And by that I mean your stomach!  The more you stuff in your belly at once, the more it tends to settle around your middle……

"Do you…um…want me to stop you at some point?" Claire asked hesitantly.  She eyed the wildness about her friend suspiciously, and something about her attitude made Claire want to stand out of arm's reach.

Marlene shook her head "no" emphatically.  "That's the whole point!  I don't want to be stopped-I just want to go, go, go until I can't swallow anymore."

Since the moment Marlene had decided to push her own advice to the limit, nothing short of a natural disaster could have made her even think twice.  She pulled out the flat, elastic waistband of her sweatpants and let it snap audibly against her empty, gurgling stomach.  "You don't even have to stay if you don't want to," Marlene offered.

"And I don't," Claire returned, seriously.  Despite what she said, though, Claire hadn't eaten in over six hours, and she enjoyed Marlene's company-albeit especially odd this evening.  Without offering another word of explanation, the two girls stood in line for food.  For Marlene, it was only round one.

By Marlene's specific request, they sat at a table directly behind the dessert bar, effectively secluding them from most of the cafeteria.  Claire sat down with tray of only a small salad and a cheese quesadilla: Marlene dropped one with three plates filled with mashed potatoes, fried chicken, macaroni and cheese, three cheeseburgers, and two glasses of chocolate milk.

"You cannot be serious," Claire half laughed, half warned Marlene.

Marlene only smiled and spooned the first glob of macaroni into her mouth.  She shoveled gooey noodles and potatoes into her mouth, swallowing even faster than she could stuff them in her watering maw.  The burgers disappeared even more quickly, each one lasting only three or four bites before it was gone.  She sucked the meat right from the chicken bones, and in only ten minutes, Marlene was chugging her second glass of milk.  During all of this, Claire did not bat an eye.  That amount of food was more or less normal for Marlene anymore, so it did not surprise her at all to see Marlene heave herself out of her chair to get a second course.  This time she came back with enough slices of thick crust triple cheese pizza to form a whole pie, all stacked one on top of the other on a single plate.  She also had a second tray brimming with more dishes from her first course; the cafeteria was nowhere near running out of food, and Marlene still felt like her stomach was an empty sack.

She downed more burgers and noodles as quickly as before, chugging a full glass of milk in between, then started in on the pizza.  The slices were thick and dripping with grease that dribbled down Marlene's chin as she stuffed each fat triangle whole into her mouth.  Marlene could feel her stomach expanding as she swallowed mouthful after mouthful of delicious, greasy goodies.  By her fifth tray, each swallow expanded her belly a little bit.  As plate after plate disappeared into her massive gut, the waist of Marlene's sweatpants stretched and stretched until it was squeezing her more tightly than her oldest pair of jeans.  By the seventh tray, the top of her belly smooshed into the edge of the table, forcing her backward and making it a little harder to reach her food.  She polished off the last smear of potatoes on her plate with her tongue then placed her hands atop her heaving belly, massaging it gently.

With no food left to distract her, she looked at Claire to find her staring, the half-eaten quesadilla forgotten long ago.  Marlene turned sideways out of her chair and rocked into a standing position.  Standing, her stomach had stretched so mightily that her shirt, which had been big and loose before her meal, was just shy of rising above the waist of her sweatpants, which itself was lost deep within the central fold of Marlene's heavy belly.

Claire snapped out of her trance, and her mind returned from wandering places that Marlene could only hope to guess.  "Are you ready to leave now?" she asked.

"Of course not," Marlene smiled.  "I'm only getting dessert!"

It had been intentional on Marlene's part that they sit as close to the dessert bar as possible because she knew just how difficult it would be to move around a crowded cafeteria once she was bloated with main courses.  She returned with half a dozen slices of cake and what seemed to be the entire tray of cookies-at least two dozen remaining-and a large bowl of Jell-O cubes that had probably also been intended to serve many students.  Calmly at first, taking her time or perhaps merely warming up again, Marlene ate the cookies one at a time.  Before she had even finished the first dozen, though, she began stacking the soft, chewy chocolate chip cookies in twos and threes, stuffing as many as would fit into her mouth and mushing them into nothing before swallowing.  When she'd finished the last cookie, her stomach had expanded enough to make the tightness of her sweatpants unbearable.  Wedging her fat fingers down under the waistband as best as she could, she scooped up the bottom of her belly in her arms and pulled the whole glopping mass out of her pants and dropped it with a muffled smack onto her thighs.

Oh! What a relief it was to have her belly free to expand at its own pace!  Her gut rolled onto her thighs, and it was growing rounder and rounder by the second.  Her thick love handles pushed down her pants even further, and Marlene's biggest shirt was unable to cover the bottom of her swollen belly.  She beamed with relief and patted the sides of her belly happily under the table.  It swayed thickly and made soft gurgles as she jiggled it happily.  Without the pressure from her pants digging into her overstuffed belly, Marlene attacked the small slices of cake with a renewed voraciousness.  Without even using a fork, she stuffed each piece into her mouth, one by one, and after the last piece had disappeared she sucked the frosting from her fingers.

All that time, Claire was truly astounded that Marlene had been able to eat so much.  She had easy downed triple what she would normally eat, which was way too much for a normal person in the first place.  She was so inwardly distracted that it took half a minute for Marlene's weak gestures to get her attention.

When Claire finally did notice, Marlene asked, "Hon, can you get me some ice cream?  I can't really…move."  She was firmly set in her groaning chair, rubbing the sides of her gut absentmindedly.

By way of answer, Claire stood and walked to the soft-serve machine, muttering to herself something that sounded like "freaking weird…"  In her absence, Marlene lifted the bowl of red Jell-O to her lips and savored the artificially fruity aroma.  Jell-O was her most favorite dessert-except for maybe ice cream…or cake-and her mouth watered anew at the thought to filling her mouth with the jiggling treat.

Instead of using a spoon, she simply tipped the bowl up a little, letting the small cubes tumble into her mouth.  They slid down her throat, going straight to her fat belly-Marlene knew they all would stay there!  She placed her hands onto her pulsing gut.  She could feel them inside her, jiggling, wobbling like her fat belly and breasts with every breath she took.  This was the feeling she sought, a feeling of fullness, roundness…  Her entire body, every swollen, flabby inch of it was a sexual playground, and her heavy, bubbling stomach was her crowning achievement.

Claire mechanically filled a bowl with vanilla ice cream, swirling the bowl below the flowing tap without really paying attention to what she was doing.  Why had she stayed so long?  What made her want to see her roommate make a gross, public spectacle of herself?  It was not even as if she was really interested in the idea of Marlene stuffing herself until she couldn't move.   In fact, it disturbed her deeply, and she worried about what her friend was becoming.  Marlene had always been fat-that was just how Claire had always known her.  Fat people tended to eat a lot, or at least it made sense to Claire that they ought to, so it was never out of the ordinary to see her chowing down every waking minute of the day; yet, somehow, over the last few months, Marlene's mentality about herself had changed.  She was slowly replacing other parts of her life with food, and here Claire was helping to further that transformation…

At the thought of her own involvement, Claire realized that the whole time she had been thinking, she had been filling up the bowl with ice cream.  She shut off the tap and recoiled at the sight of the overflowing bowl.  Cold, white liquid dribbled over her hand, and a substantial amount had dripped into a pile on the floor.  There was enough ice cream in the bowl to feed three smaller people, but rather than dumping some of the excess, Claire knew that Marlene would rather have the bowl literally overflowing with ice-creamy goodness.

After the cafeteria finally closed, Marlene staggered back into her room alone.  Claire had gone to a meeting before Marlene had finished eating, leaving her to stuff whatever she could down into her stomach before she became too full to stand.  She let the door swing closed behind her and waddled slowly to her bed, bearing her massively swollen stomach in her arms.  She collapsed onto her blankets, and her belly sloshed up and down, bloated beyond reckoning on pound upon pound of food and at least two gallons of various bubbling liquids.

Marlene had never swallowed so much at once in her entire life.  An unwavering smile was plastered to her face; she was practically drunk on self satisfaction as she rubbed and petted her churning belly.  The floppy, sweating mound of fat sloshed away from her hands, rocking her back and forth slowly on her screaming mattress.

"Mmmm…so good!" she cooed as she scooped up handfuls of her thick love handles and squeezed rhythmically into the sides of her belly; in and out-in and out.  The top of her gut squelched and bounced heavily, squishing like a soft water balloon.  Her bottom roll slammed down on her upper thighs and sent pulsing waves of erotic pressure to her fat-covered privates.  The whole bed rocked with the pleasure of her moaning.

Claire came back to the room an hour after Marlene, and when she arrived, the light was still on.  She found Marlene, her entire gurgling stomach spilling out of her clothes, passed out asleep on top of her sheets.  Even while unconscious, Marlene's hands gently squeezed and stroked her big, soft belly, and she was smiling in her sleep.

Claire quietly changed into her night clothes and sat down on her own bed to read.  It was still relatively early in the evening, but she had nowhere else to go that night.  She reclined into her pillows silently, thumbing through her notes, her only company the irregular ruffling of a turning page.  She did not look at Marlene, and she made no attempt to wake her.  After a time, she felt too tired to study any longer, so she turned out the light and went to sleep.

Marlene awoke feeling positively fantastic.  She opened her eyes and felt awake immediately: she had gotten a great night's sleep, had eaten a good meal, and had dreamt wonderful dreams of chocolate rivers and ice cream sundae mountains.  She stretched lengthwise from her fingers to her toes then scratched absently at her exposed stomach.

She smiled and closed her eyes, relishing the feeling of her warm, squishing skin in her hands.  She patted it in a "good morning" greeting and sat up in bed.  Her entire stomach rolled over her pants, covering half of her lap, and it growled at her impetuously to be filled.

Oh, she was ravenously hungry!  She did not quite know what to expect hunger-wise by the morning, but clearly her extreme eating the previous day had stretched her stomach enough to feel empty almost right away.

It was daylight, she observed, which meant that Claire was either already in class or working out, and Marlene was appreciative to Claire for having let her sleep.  She made a mental note to thank her later.  Without further ado, Marlene swung out of bed.  Her thick, empty belly swung with her, and she staggered uncertainly for a step or two before she came to terms with balance.  Without even needing to check the scale, Marlene knew immediately that her belly had never felt this heavy before-never been this fat before!  She slapped it lightly to get a good jiggle out of it as she sauntered to the bathroom.  Through Marlene could not see it, her gait viewed from behind had grown markedly sexier over the last few months.  Instead of slumping limply, her wide hips and ass swayed in time with her steps, lifting and jiggling beautifully with each footfall.  Even Marlene had to admit: her ass, even though the shape of her body made it wider, finally made her belly look good.

In the bathroom, Marlene stripped off her shirt and shimmied out of her tight, sweat pants.  In her bra and thong panties, she admired her naked body in the full-length mirror on the bathroom door.  Her legs and thighs were astonishingly well defined for a girl of her sheer size.  With pants on, no one would have expected her to have any definition in her calves, not even the small amount that walking with Claire had bestowed.  The same was true for her thighs and wide hips.  Each of Marlene's thighs was thicker than her roommate's hips, but they were smooth and shapely, no saddles bags, and only enough cellulite to meet the requirement of any semi-decent fat girl.  Despite the great size of her thighs, to Marlene's sheer delight, her belly was finally catching up.  Marlene's pink thong was totally invisible, smothered beneath the heavy lower fat roll of her belly.  This same roll circled her hips, swelling over the thin strings holding her thong in place and burying them under bloated love handles too thick for Marlene's hand to grab.  The bottom roll was by far the biggest, but the upper roll had grown thick enough to hang completely over her belly button, hiding its depths from view.  Thanks to Marlene's easy-fit waist policy, her belly had made some nominal progress toward collapsing from two distinct rolls into one big gut, but try as she might, by that point the fat was too thick and the rolls too far gone.  By all rights, Marlene's once big-now enormous-breasts should have been hanging to nearly to the bottom of her upper roll, but the strong support and sometimes uncomfortable tightness of her bras kept them from stretching further even as their size and weight increased.  Stroking herself pleasantly with her flabby arms, Marlene smiled more broadly: she had done good work.

Marlene turned away from the mirror, and with a little jiggling in her lower tummy, she pulled her scale out from under the sink with her toes.  The scale had a three hundred sixty pound limit, and every time Marlene used it, she prayed for that number.  Gingerly but shaking with excitement, Marlene stepped on the cold, black foot pad and lifted her stomach out of the way to read the numbers.  She waited with baited breath until 344.2 glowed into life on the digital readout.

"Oh…wow," Marlene gasped.  She dropped her belly onto her thighs with a loud slap, and the number jumped up and down briefly.

"Over thirty pounds," she gaped, squeezing her fat and rubbing herself with glee.  "It's only been, what…two months?  Hee hee!" she giggled.

Stepping off the scale, Marlene wrapped her arms around her belly and hugged it with delight; her arms sank into the quivering fat that squished and wobbled as she squeezed.  The pressure made her tummy rumble again, and she dropped her fat amidst a flurry of jiggling.

"Every day," she promised herself, stroking herself from her nipples to the very bottom of her belly.  "I'm going to eat like that every day to keep this baby nice and stuffed!"  With that, she cleaned herself up as quickly as she could before rushing headlong into a promise-fulfilling breakfast.

                                                               ***

One afternoon in the last month of the semester, Claire entered her room to find Marlene squatting in front of her computer screen, a position that had been the norm for weeks.  Box upon empty box of junk food and piles of crumpled bags and wrappers littered her desk in mounds, slowly but surely building into a wall of past gluttony that enclosed Marlene's computer nook.  Marlene herself sat without pants crammed into a tiny chair which had bent and warped into a carbon copy of every detail of her tremendous butt.  Most of Marlene's body poured over the sides of the armless chair, molding to the edges like putty, and her wide hips were crammed seamlessly between the sides of the narrow space below her desktop.  Between the width of Marlene's fat back and the piles of empty food containers, Marlene's arms were invisible, and the only defining feature that Claire could pick out to identify her roommate was the back of her head.  Her dark, still luxuriant hair was pulled back into a careless ponytail.

"Hey, Lena," Claire greeted as she unpacked a pair of running shoes from her closet.

"Mmmmhmmm…Oh!  Hold just a minute…" Marlene said without lifting her eyes from the recessed computer screen.  Claire heard frantic tapping from a hidden keyboard followed by a grunt of exertion before Marlene pried herself free of her desk.

"Ok-sorry!  Hey, Claire!" she greeted her roommate eagerly and spun around in her chair.

Claire's eyes popped.  She had seen very little of Marlene in the last week, but even in so little time the fat girl in the chair in front of her had changed noticeably.  Marlene's gut was positively gigantic, and it dominated her appearance.  Her fat sat on her naked thighs in a hundred pound lump of jiggly flesh.  It flowed out halfway to her knees, and it was so thick that the sheer size of it forced Marlene to lean back in her chair.  The shirt she was wearing only covered the upper of her two belly rolls, leaving everything completely exposed below the deep trench where to belly button was buried.  The shirt was clearly just too small all over, though, because it was stretched so tightly over Marlene's melon-sized breasts that Claire could actually see the color of her bra even though the shirt was forest green.

Claire was too distracted by Marlene's obscene appearance to voice what she had been about to say, giving Marlene the first word.

"What's up, roomie?" she asked.  Her expression, her entire demeanor belonged to someone who seemed to be completely unaware of how uncomfortable her practically naked body might make others feel.

"Well…this is usually when we go walking together, so I came to get you," Claire said hesitantly.

Marlene blinked for a moment as if she did not understand Claire's language, but soon the request dawned on her, and her expression became apologetic.

"Oh…I don't think I can go today, sorry.  I took a break just now from talking to, like, five people, and, well…" she trailed off, indicating her glowing computer station with a sluggish gesture of her head.

"Oh, no-no!  That's okay," Claire said with a poorly suppressed note of disappointment.  "Don't worry about it."

"I'm really sorry," Marlene repeated, slowly wheeling herself back into typing position.  "You go have fun, though, okay?  We'll go later-this weekend or something."

"Sure," Claire mumbled, putting on her shoes.

It had been nine days since the last walk she and Marlene had taken, and the intervals had been spotty for even longer.  She knew that Marlene was not trying to lie to her; she would simply forget she had agreed to do anything at all.

"I'll be back in an hour or so," Claire called as she closed the door, but if Marlene had heard, she made no sign that she had gotten the message.

Over the past several weeks, Marlene's days had passed filled with eating, and her nights had become increasingly engaged in her blog.  Her following had exploded in popularity since she started posting her steadily rising weight.  Comments and questions came flooding in, and she would spend all night and early into the morning chatting with fellow fat enthusiasts and stuffing snack foods into her mouth.  Her posts became less of a self-experiment and more of a semi-weekly ritual that demanded larger portions of her free time in order to keep up with her feedback.  Marlene's newest posts were much longer and much more conversational than her first tentative ventures, and with an increased confidence and blog-writing skill came an increase in her online discussions and a substantial growth in her internet relationships.

When she wasn't sweating over her latest entry, Marlene held lengthy, deep conversations at all hours of the night with people whom she had never met but who seemed to have a vested interest in the daily workings of her life.  It was a new and decidedly good discovery for Marlene, the admiration and above all camaraderie to be found in her online fat-people community.  People there wanted to talk to her about things in which she was interested.  With the people on the internet, Marlene could chat about where to find the best fat-girl clothes, give people encouragement in weight gaining progress, answer questions and be liked and respected for her size and ideas instead of being belittled for them.  For the first time in her life, Marlene felt truly accepted-desired!-for her secrets instead of judged by them.

Oh sure, Marlene and Claire had their walks together, and they shared a room, ate meals together, did homework together…  But Claire did not share Marlene's feelings; she did not share the way Marlene felt about her body or the motivations that got her through the day.  Whatever Marlene did about pleasing her belly, Claire merely tolerated it; she did not respect her for it.  The people online…they were her real friends.

As these cyber companions became more important to Marlene, though, the parts of her life that had brought them together in the first place-school, her friends, her non-fat related inspirations-waned gradually, taking up less of her time, becoming distractions instead of sources of enjoyment.

Claire dropped in on Marlene again late in the afternoon on Sunday of the same week.  She zipped up her jacket and stuck her hands in her pockets expectantly.  The weather had taken a cold turn over the last few days, but Claire was still eager to brave the elements for their girl-date.  She flung her arms wide, however, upon seeing Marlene hunched over her desk, bare bottomed and typing busily.

"You aren't ready to go yet?" Claire accused her mostly undressed roommate.

Marlene's head popped out of her cave, and she spied an irritated Claire.  "Ready for what?" she asked, chewing absently on a piece of taffy.

Though it barely seemed possible, Marlene's giant gut actually looked bigger than it had at the beginning of the week.  It might have only been the way she was sitting, but her wobbling fat rolls covered more of her thighs than ever, and her volleyball-sized tits were only kept inside her tiny t-shirt by tension.  For the first time since she had known Marlene, Claire's lip curled in disgust at the sight of her.

"You said three days ago that you would go to movies with me!" Claire huffed.  "I reminded you yesterday, and you promised you would go."

Marlene stared through Claire dumbly, but after an insistent silence, realization dawned on the corpulent young miss and her expression became apologetic.

"Oh no!" Marlene pouted.  "I'm so sorry, Claire, but I can't go.  My anthropology paper is due tomorrow, and I'll never get it done if I spend three hours out at the movies."

Claire cocked an eyebrow impatiently.  "I thought you finished that paper last night," she said.  "I saw you typing it.  You said you would finish it last night."

Marlene's eyes shifted guiltily.  "I did work on it, but I didn't quite get it done.  At about nine last night I remembered that I scheduled an update for yesterday, too, but I hadn't even started on that yet, and I had, like, five different people to respond to, but as soon as I got online, these other guys…well…."

Marlene's explanation trailed into silence.  Claire's heart was crying, but her eyes blazed, irate and full of smothered shouts.  "You promised we could do this, Marlene," she smoldered.  "Why didn't you finish writing your paper this afternoon?"

"I had to check my blog for-"

"That's right!" Claire barked.  "You had to check your blog!  You had to write something else!  You had to check off another item from your list!" she said with venom in her teeth.

"Yeah, of course I did," Marlene agreed, her attention still caught between Claire and her flashing computer screen.

Claire's voice died away.  She blinked at her roommate, dumbfounded, then stuck her hands back in her pockets and turned to leave.

"That's alright," she murmured.  "I'll just go with the girls, instead."

Still remorseful but with rapidly waning attention, Marlene inched her way back into her internet chamber and said, "I'm sorry, Claire.  We'll do something next week-I promise."

"I know you do," Claire said.  When Marlene's back was turned, she swept up her laptop, tucked it under her arm, and left the room.

With her head buzzing, she trudged out of the building and into the brisk winter air.  For a quarter mile or so, Claire felt like she was little better than Marlene; she, too, had told a lie.  There was no one to see a movie with her.  Other than Marlene, Claire did not have many friends, not the sort of friends that she could call at the spur of the moment and ask to go to a movie.  Acquaintances in classes, study partners…but little else.  After a full circuit of the campus, her head had cleared enough for her to realize she was cold.  She ducked inside the campus library when she passed by it, and, with a concern-knit brow, she walked down aisle after aisle of wooden tables and armchairs before she settled into a warm, secluded corner at the rear of the building.

Claire curled into a lonely green armchair and opened her laptop on her knees.  She opened an internet browser and began a short search that led her to a website she had only seen once before: it was a fat forum, a discussion board for people obsesses with gaining weight.  It was not just any fat-forum, though; it was the home of the blog of LustyLena300.  Claire had never read her roommate's blog.  She had never cared to.  The subject matter did not appeal to her-she found it exceptionally weird, as a matter of fact-but she had gotten more than enough information from her walk-talks with Marlene to know the contents of practically every post.  Nonetheless, Claire had to see this all-important blog for herself.  She had to know the face of what-or who-was dragging Marlene away from her.

Claire quickly found that viewing actual posts and comments required registration to the forum.  With some trepidation, she registered herself as "cb111," a name she thought was safely ambiguous.  In her soft hole, Claire spent the next hour reading every sentence Marlene had ever posted.  She read every blog post, every comment she could find.  What she found surprised her.  Marlene wrote with an enthusiasm and brashness that she had rarely observed in her in person.  Sure, Marlene was chipper, but she had never been so confident, so assertive!  Some of the discussion she had with other members…it was no longer a surprise to Claire why she spent so many hours online.  In the few short months since she had started posting, Marlene had positively exploded-and not just in weight.  She was everywhere, all over the forum, a contributor to discussions and a topic of discussion by others.  Mesmerized, Claire skimmed through line after line of her roommate's contributions to old chats, and she even came across a handful of pictures Marlene had posted of herself-though Claire had no idea when she had taken them-which showed her for all intents and purposes nude in all her fattened glory.

Whilst contemplating one such revealing picture, a quiet "pop" startled Claire.  A little window had sprung up from the bottom of her screen, and crisp, black letters greeted her:

"LittleBo-bese: Hi!  You new here?"

Claire panicked briefly and clapped her laptop shut.  She caught the screen in her hand, though, before it closed complete and took a deep breath.  She realized that in order to see Marlene's comments, she must have inadvertently signed into a chat room.  Claire extended her sinewy neck, scanning the area for any prying eyes, but she found herself quite isolated.

What's the harm?  She thought to herself.  There was no way this girl-she assumed it was a girl, anyway-would have any idea who Claire really was.  She might be able to learn a little more by talking to her.  The keys on Claire's laptop ticked sharply in the otherwise unbroken silence about her.

"cb111: I guess so."

There was a brief pause due to Claire's own delay in responding, but afterward the conversation flowed quickly and smoothly.

"LittleBo-bese: Cool!  It's nice to meet you!
cb111:         you, too.  Have you been a member here long?
LittleBo-bese: a year or so, yeah.
LittleBo-bese: I found out about this place from another forum, actually
cb111:         you mean there are OTHER forums like this one?!
LittleBo-bese: LOL!!!
LittleBo-bese: …you are kidding, right?
cb111:         of course!  Obviously
LittleBo-bese: sure, lol
cb111:         so what are the people like around here?
LittleBo-bese: we're pretty nice, mostly
LittleBo-bese: there are a couple of really snooty old-timers, but…meh
cb111:         what place doesn't have those, though, right?
LittleBo-bese: lol
cb111:         what do you talk about here?
cb111:         so I can decide if this place is right for me, I mean
LittleBo-bese: *shrug*  gainer stuff, mostly
LittleBo-bese: are you a gainer?  If not, there is still some pretty cool stuff
LittleBo-bese: the "fat and society" board is really nice, I think
LittleBo-bese: there are a lot of great people there who'll help you feel better
                        about your body
LittleBo-bese: if you have issues with that; that's where I started, actually
cb111:         really?
LittleBo-bese: yep!  If you need help, angelM is the person who helped me the
                        most
cb111:         thanks, but I'm ok, actually
LittleBo-bese: awesome-me too now!
LittleBo-bese: I'm officially a SSBBW, and I LOVE it!!!
cb111:         

Claire had no idea what half of what the girl said meant, but she seemed to be doing alright.

LittleBo-bese: r u just here for the community, then?
cb111:         Kind of-a friend actually referred me here
LittleBo-bese: who?
cb111:         LustyLena300
LittleBo-bese: … … …!!!!!!!
LittleBo-bese: no shit?  You're not lying?
cb111:         of course not-why?
LittleBo-bese: holy crap!  How do you know her?
cb111:         she's…um…kind of my roommate
LittleBo-bese: NO WAY!!!11!
LittleBo-bese: I LOVE her blog!  You HAVE to tell me what it's like to live with her!
LittleBo-bese: Please!!!!  She's been my INSPIRATION!
LittleBo-bese: do you go shopping with her?
LittleBo-bese: what's her favorite place to eat?
LittleBo-bese: does she tell you stuff she doesn't post?......

Claire slammed the screen closed, cutting off the conversation midstream.  It had been too much, and she panicked.  After the panic subsided, though, Claire found herself staring blankly at a wall.  Marlene was so popular online.  Claire had no idea…she knew that there were people she talked to, but she had never thought that her roommate would have had an entire cult of people worshiping her like some fat idol.  It was all so strange, and Claire understood very little of it.  She felt very small all of a sudden, though, and terribly alone.

After a while, Claire left her seat and returned to the library entrance.  Just inside the doorway, there was a wall taken up entirely by a single, massive bulletin board.  This board served as a nexus, an intellectual meeting ground for the entire student body.   It was plastered from floor to ceiling with posters, fliers, advertisements, and pictures; green papers overlapped pink papers; torn white sheets with fingered bottoms where phone numbers had been taken were all pinned in place, fighting for the coveted space.  Anyone could find just about anything to buy, sell, barter, or take for free; furniture, housing, clothing, slave labor, pets, and Help Wanted, all crammed together in a gigantic testament to collegiate frugality.  As Claire passed, one black and white advertisement caught her eye.  A far away photograph of a duplex apartment above a short description was pinned sideways near the extreme left of the board.  Curious, Claire gravitated toward it until she could read the fine text.  The building was close to campus, fairly new, and the rent would be less than she paid for board already.  The offer was too tempting to let alone, and Claire reached out to snatch the ad before anyone else could take it from the board.

"Oh!"  A sharp cry stopped Claire's hand mid-swipe.

A mousy girl beside her had seemingly popped up out of nowhere.  She was short and had a wool cap pulled over her straight brown hair, and she reminded Claire vaguely of someone she knew from her physiology course.

"Where you looking at that, too?" the girl-Shelly, Claire recalled-asked with a note of disappointment.

"Y-yeah…I guess I was," Claire stammered.  "Why…were you interested in renting it?"